Anas Sarwar has said that taxing private school fees would provide a “much-needed” immediate cash injection into the state sector that would be used to recruit more teachers.
If elected at Westminster in July, Labour is planning to remove the VAT exemption from private school fees, in a move that could have significant implications for Scotland's education sector.
For example, in Edinburgh, around 25% of pupils are educated in private academies,
Private sector leaders believe some children will be withdrawn because of steep fee increases, putting more pressure on underfunded state primaries and secondaries.
However, in an interview with BBC Scotland, Scottish Labour leader Mr Sarwar, who was educated privately and whose children also attend a fee-paying school, insisted the move would have little impact on the numbers of children attending private schools.
“I genuinely believe it will balance itself out. Enrolment into private schools has gone up in the past year rather than down, contrary to the scaremongering," he said.
This was an important move to help state schools deal with record levels of violence and the loss of teachers, Mr Sarwar claimed. Edinburgh has lost more than 170 teaching posts in the past year and the figure could rise to more than 400 during the next three years.
“We are taking teachers away from working-class kids’ classrooms at a time when we are falling down the international education league tables,” he said.
“That’s why we think this is a proportionate thing to do, so we can give an immediate cash injection into state schools.”